Tuesday, April 12, 2011

A tribute to Kevin Moore

Kevin Moore didn't do anything special in the last few weeks, that I know of. However, I recently got the latest OSI album, and listening to it the past few days inspired me to make a blog post to introduce readers to this man's amazing music. We'll look at five songs, so if you've got the patience for some great tunes, make sure to read past the jump. Some of these are long, open another browser tab while you listen might be advised.

Kevin Moore was the first keyboardist of Dream Theater, with them for the first three albums. This song, which he wrote the lyrics for, comes from their second, Images and Words. A lot of people who like Dream Theater think this is their best album, and I'm inclined to agree with them. This song can be interpreted on a lot of levels, and even though it feels like it's three parts long, it's only five minutes.

This is the last song he did with Dream Theater - the music and lyrics are both composed by him alone. A few days before they finished recording the album, Kevin told the rest of the band he'd be leaving so he could have more artistic freedom with a solo career. The day after that, he and vocalist James LaBrie recorded this song. If LaBrie's voice sounds different, it's because Moore's is layered in with it - which, amusingly, LaBrie only realized after he heard it on the album. "Kevin Moore saw this photograph in a fashion magazine of a beautiful model wearing a space-dye vest and he fell in love with her," LaBrie said. "He carried that magazine around with him for ages, but he realized that the only way the innocence could be kept, so that he could retain that love for her, was if she stayed on the page. If he'd met her, all that would have been lost."

This song's lyrics reflect a similar theme as the quote above - "Life is so much cleaner on the page." This one comes from Dead Air for Radios, Kevin Moore's first solo album under the name Chroma Key. I like this song because it it explains why he left Dream Theater and reflects a sentiment I feel a lot of times, because of the way it blends in the samples, and because of the amazing piano part.

This song, Dirt from a Holy Place, comes from the first album by OSI. The band is the named after the Office of Strategic Influence, an organization created after the September 11 attacks to spread misinformation and spread fake news articles to the media. After a story was run about it in 2002, those operations were transferred to the Information Operations Task Force. (Bureaucracies do not die when terminated; they change names: Gilhooley's First Fundamental Finding.) This song shows the way OSI brings the electronic and progressive metal genres together. Moore sings on many OSI songs, but this one is an instrumental.

This last song, Radiologue, comes from the album that inspired this post, Blood. It shows a sharper edge of their sound than the previous, and I really like the effects, and the new drummer, Gavin Harrison, shines in it too. The rest of the album is at least this good, and I encourage you to check it out. Opeth fans will particularly like track 8.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed. I do expect I'll be talking more about Mu and Nix soon, but I thought some wading would be welcome in the meantime.